The Dark Clue by James Wilson Page B

I could not imagine where hundreds of people would fit, unless the court were a mile long; but I contented myself with asking:
    â€˜Anyone called Turner?’
    â€˜Turner? No, sir, not as I knows.’
    â€˜Any old people, who might remember how it was years ago?’
    â€˜Well, sir …’ She frowned, and her gaze flickered towards the gate. ‘There’s old Jenny Watts, as I’ve ‘eard tell is ninety …’
    There was a sudden eagerness in her tone; and I could not help noticing that her eyes followed my hand as it reached into my pocket and drew out a shilling.
    â€˜Will you take me to her?’ I said.
    For answer, she glanced at the pawnbroker’s across the street, then trotted to her charges playing in the gutter, and said something to the eldest girl. Then she ran back and took the money, before looking round furtively again, and muttering:
    â€˜Only I mustn’t be long.’
    She opened the gate easily enough, but as we passed through, a boy of perhaps fifteen suddenly emerged from the shadows and blocked our way. Without taking his eyes from us he half-turned his head and shouted a word – I could not make it out, but it sounded like ‘khulim’ – into the court behind him. All at once, in the darkness beyond, I saw figures hurrying about, and there was a frantic chink and scraping of metal, which led me to suppose that they had been gambling, and were gathering up the evidence.
    â€˜All’s well,’ said the girl. “E’s not’ – and again I could not discern the word, but it might have been ‘esclop’, or possibly “Islop’. The boy seemed no more inclined to let us pass; for he spread his feet, and folded his arms, and started, slowly and insolently, to whistle.
    â€˜Come on, Sam,’ said the girl. ‘We’re just going to Jenny Watts’.’
    The boy widened his eyes and grinned; and then, glancing behind him again, to see that his companions had finished their business, lazily stepped aside.
    Perhaps it was their slang which put the idea in my head (for there seemed a distinctly Arabic ring to it), but my first thought as we entered the court was that I had been transported to some city of the East. The buildings, four or five storeys high, faced each other across a space so narrow that – as, supposedly, in Damascus or Baghdad – a woman on the top floor could shake hands with her neighbour opposite without fear of mishap. The eight or nine boys who stood about, watching me silently, only added to the impression; for, if there was nothing exotic about their clothes or their complexions, yet their blank sullen faces made it all too easy to imagine that they belonged to a different race entirely. Only when you looked up, and saw a strip of foul grey tinged with brown – made fouler and browner every second by smoke from the fires of those who could afford them – did you realize that this was not a cool refuge from the Mediterranean sun, but a part of our own city, which we have condemned to perpetual twilight.
    â€˜In ‘ere, sir,’ said the girl, stopping by a green door that had wrenched its hinge from the frame. She pushed it open with her shoulder, and led me into a kind of lobby which gave access to a scuffed and dirty wooden staircase. The air was cool but close, and so foetid that I had to press my handkerchief to my nose.
    â€˜Are you not well, sir?’ said the girl, clearly unaccustomed to such faint-heartedness. ‘It’s a bit of a way; and ‘ard if you ain’t got your wind.’
    The cause of her concern was soon apparent. Treading gingerly (for the steps were bowed and shiny with use, and I feared my boots might go through them altogether), I followed her up three flights of stairs to the top of the building, where she succumbed to a terrible fit of coughing so violent that I found myself looking for blood on the hand she held to her